OF COLDS AND COUGHS.

253

Above all, his supper should be light; as small pos-set, or water-gruel sweetened with honey, and a littletoasted bread in it. If honey should disagree withthe stomach, the gruel may be sweetened with treacleor coarse sugar, and sharpened with the jelly of cur-rants. Those who have been accustomed to generousliquors may take wine-whey instead of gruel, whichmay be sweetened as above.

The patient ought to lie longer than usual a bed,and to encourage a gentle sweat, which is easilybrought on towards morning by drinking tea, or anykind of warm diluting liquor. I have often knownthis practice carry off a cold in one day, which, in allprobability, had it been neglected, would have costthe patient his life, or have confined him for somemonths. Would people sacrifice a little time to easeand warmth, and practice a moderate degree of ab-stinence when the first symptoms of a cold appear,we have reason to believe that most of the bad effectswhich flow from an obstructed perspiration might beprevented. But, after the disease has gathered strengthby delay, all attempts to remove it often prove vain.A pleurisy, a peripneumony, or a fatal consumptionof the lungs, are the common effects of colds whichhave either been totally neglected, or treated impro-perly.

Many attempt to cure a cold, by getting drunk:but this, to say no worse of it, is a very hazardousexperiment. No doubt it may sometimes succeed, bysuddenly restoring the perspiration ; but when thereis any degree of inflammation, which is frequentlythe case, strong liquors, instead of removing the ma-lady, will increase it. By this means a common coldmay be converted into an inflammatory fever.

When those who labour for their daily bread havethe misfortune to catch cold, they cannot afford to losea day or two, in order to keep themselves warm, andtake a little medicine; by which means the disorder isoften so aggravated as to confine them for a long time,or even to render them ever after unable to sustain hardlabour. But even such of the labouring poor as can

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